Float

Float, by Elevate Entertainment is a simple, addictive and ingenious game with many game modes from which to choose from. Bop your balloon that is ballooning to float left or float right, up or down depending on where you want to float your balloon through ingenious varying game modes.

The game is cute and has smooth graphics and physics effects. To move each balloon, you just tap on one of the sides of the balloon and it will bounce in the opposite directional angle to where you tapped. There are many different shaped balloons ballooning in many different colours. There are even heavier than normal star shaped balloons.

There is a bar on most levels that gets lower as the levels progress. You get more points if you hit the balloon up from below this bar.

There is ‘Normal’ mode where the bar gets lower and more balloons appear. You can get extra points throughout the game by hitting ‘colour combos’. Beware of repeatedly hitting the same balloon. The idea is to tap on different balloons with variation, which cuts out any urge to cheat.

‘Timed Mode’ is as it suggests, whereas the ‘Zen’ mode is just for relaxation and would be ideal for very young children who haven’t got hand-eye coordination quite yet.

‘Limbo Mode’ simulates a limbo bar which gets lower with every balloon tap, and there is the ‘One & Done’ mode which blows up and adds balloons one at a time, until you can no longer keep up.

‘Hot Potato’ mode is where you have to avoid tapping certain balloons. Although it has to be said that I couldn’t figure out how you identify which balloons where the ‘hot potatoes’ to avoid. Perhaps I’m missing something there.

‘Danger’ mode is a fun level to play as the balloons rise instead of fall. You have to avoid the dangerous spikes that scroll down from above.

In the ‘Up & Away’ mode the balloons also go ballooning and rise from below and the idea is to stop them escaping.

Last but not least is my favourite mode, the ‘Vacuum’ mode. This was really fun to play, as an industrial vacuum appears at the top of the screen and sucks up the balloons. The vacuum changes colour, indicating which coloured balloons it is accepting. If you accidentally let a different coloured balloon escape into the vacuum, it damages the vacuum. The vacuum gets lower and lower as time goes on.

This game is a good example of a solid idea for an app, as the game doesn’t sport any complicated graphics as such, it’s just a neat, effective, well programmed app that will appeal to all age groups.

Float has had over 1.6 million downloads and has 50 achievements to unlock. The developer claims that this is an app to make you feel happy and come away with that ‘feel good’ feeling, which I think it certainly does. Get ballooning with ‘Float’.